share the sunny significance of Concord. Then, shrinking again,
alarmed at its own boldness, it dreams on towards the Merrimac and the
sea.

The absence of factories has already implied its shallowness and
slowness. In truth it is a very slow river, belonging much more to the
Indian than to the Yankee; so much so, indeed, that until within a
very few years there was an annual visit to its shores from a few sad
heirs of its old masters, who pitched a group of tents in the meadows,
and wove their tidy baskets and strung their beads in unsmiling
silence. It was the same thing that I saw in Jerusalem among the Jews.
Every Friday they repair to the remains of the old temple wall, and
pray and wail, kneeling upon the pavement and kissing the stones. But
that passionate Oriental regret was not more impressive than this
silent homage of a waning race, who, as they beheld the unchanged
river, knew that, unlike it, the last drops of their existence were
gradually flowing away, and that for their tribes there shall be no
ingathering.

So shallow is the stream that the amateur Corydons who embark at
morning to explore its remoter shores will, not infrequently in
midsummer, find their boat as suddenly tranquil and motionless as the
river, having placidly grounded upon its oozy bottom. Or, returning at
evening, they may lean over the edge as they lie at length in the
boat, and float with the almost imperceptible current, brushing the
tips of the long water-grass and reeds below them in the stream--a
river jungle, in which lurk pickerel and trout--with the sensation of
a bird drifting upon soft evening air over the tree-tops. No available
or profitable craft navigate these waters, and animated gentlemen from
the city who run up for "a mouthful of fresh air" cannot possibly